The bus stop outside COTA’s Downtown headquarters on High Street is the busiest in the city.

Buses that travel along 26 lines stop just north of the intersection of Broad and High streets,
and about 2,600 people board them every weekday. That’s in addition to 11,600 vehicles that pass
through the intersection.

Other Downtown stops on High have a fraction of those boardings, while thousands of cars pass
by.

But changes in the Central Ohio Transit Authority’s High Street operations are in the works to
reduce the number of buses and ease some congestion.

Mayor Michael B. Coleman wants fewer buses on High Street, and the agency’s review of its bus
network includes tentative plans to cut them by more than one-third during peak travel times in
some places. It also would decrease the number of bus lines that use the Broad and High stop.

“Sometimes I think we get in our own way on High Street,” COTA CEO Curtis Stitt said. “(But) it’s
not just a matter of how we use High Street. It’s how we use every street.”

Fewer buses on the busy corridor could relieve some of the congestion and perhaps render
dedicated rush-hour bus lanes unnecessary, Stitt said. Removing the lanes could help spread out
rush-hour traffic across more of High Street, where cars far outnumber bus passengers.

COTA needs the dedicated lanes between Spring Street and I-70 during rush hour to make the buses
more convenient, said Mike Bradley, COTA’s vice president for planning, adding that if more
commuters rode the bus, there would be fewer cars and less congestion.

During peak times, 57 buses travel in one direction every hour between Broad and Long streets.
That would drop to 35 under a tentative plan that will near its final form in September.

That’s a side effect of systemwide changes that are coming. COTA wants to reduce the number of
bus transfers Downtown by making it more convenient to use suburban service.

Its proposal does that by operating the bus network on more of a grid, where bus lines travel
directly between parts of the suburbs, instead of a radial system that requires a passenger riding
between outlying neighborhoods to ride into Downtown before shooting back out to a final
destination.

Those types of lines will become more frequent and draw traffic away from Downtown, Bradley
said. On bus lines where many transfers occur, routes can be tweaked to take transferring riders to
their final destination. For example, the No. 1 Livingston Avenue bus could go straight to Ohio
State University once it reached Downtown instead of turning northwest.

COTA also is looking at putting more lines on Front, 3rd and 4th streets, Stitt said. Express
routes would network through COTA’s two Downtown transit hubs.

Under the most-recent proposal, the 26 lines that stop at Broad and High would drop to nine,
Bradley said.

“It’s hard to say where there are too many buses or room for more because we’re trying to adjust
to a growing traffic volume as the city population gets larger,” said Rick Tilton, assistant
director in the city’s Department of Public Service. “One of the things we want to do is convince
more people to use mass transit as well as using bicycles, and less emphasis on the individual
automobile.”

The city has tried to make other corridors more pedestrian-friendly by slowing traffic on those
streets. For example, rush-hour parking bans that were lifted on 3rd and 4th streets and on High
Street through the Short North this year have caused slowdowns.

COTA uses a statistical sample to calculate the number of people boarding and exiting buses. The
agency purchased a new system that counts every time a rider swipes a fare card or deposits money
in the fare box, but the GPS component of that software malfunctioned through much of 2013. That
makes it impossible to calculate reliable totals of the actual number of rides started at each
stop.

High Street traffic affects business development, said Amy Taylor, chief operating officer for
the Columbus Downtown Development Corp. “I think the congestion along High Street is one of the
reasons we’ve seen a lack of retail on High Street.”

Parking meters added on High between Nationwide Boulevard and the Franklin County Courthouse in
2012 have helped, she said, citing retailers in the Lazarus Building.

COTA has had to move stops to accommodate the parking, which cannot be used during peak travel
times.

In some cases, congestion on High Street can be good for businesses, said Marc Conte, deputy
director of the Capital Crossroads special-improvement district.

“It doesn’t serve the businesses well if you can zip through the length of Downtown in 60
seconds like you can on 3rd Street,” he said.